If you want to talk about precedent - how about polygamy in Utah? There was a long precedent of that. Substitute that if you like. I was trying to convey a feeling.
User 'sho' wants to present Hong Kong's efforts to preserve their rights in a way that the USA would understand.
When Utah wanted to become a state, they obviously would have liked to preserve their polygamy practice. It took a long time before things settled down and Utah became a state.
In a sense, that's where Hong Kong is right now. "One country, two systems." They aren't a fully-integrated part of the country, though I don't want to delegitimize them by calling them a "territory," maybe the comparison isn't so bad.
There's pressure from the mainland to conform. Just like there was lots of pressure put on Utah to conform.
It seems like a decent comparison.
Yes, it does (assuming you mean precedent). Alabama was one of the initial members of the Confederacy, which it created/joined on March 13, 1861.
Now, this might sound like I'm disagreeing, but I would say, consider the outcome of the next several years. It is true that the United States fought this out to the n'th degree, and self-governance lost.
One relevant difference is that there is a fairly solid case that Alabama joined the United States of its own free will. (Whether they realized it was inherently a one-way trip, well, that's another discussion.) I'm not sure if I agree that Hong Kong was quite so free. But it was certainly legal.